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Help: keep site, kill email

I have a domain that gets too much spam. So much I want to kill that domain. But just email, I want to keep the Web site.

Note that I do have a very good anti-spam filter, and I know how to turn the domain off in the MTA level. But I don't want the MTA receiving and bouncing messages sent to that domain. That would be a waste of resources. I don't even want the mail to reach my MTA. I want to create a "black hole" that tells the sender that the domain doesn't even exist here. At the same time, keep the Web site running.

How do I that? I wonder if just deleting the MX record would be enough.

It's been more than 24 hours, and mail sent to that domain still reaches my mailbox.

I understand that a *location* needs to propagate. But the location didn't change. It's still here, at VPSLink and my domain. So MTAs from all over the world should head my way. But, once they get here and find no MX record, mail should bounce, shouldn't it?

If you continue to run an MTA on the host configured with the A record of the domain, it will continue to receive email for the domain. Simply stop the mail daemon process and configure it not to start.

I'd like to say that after a few days/weeks/months/years without an MTA answering, the spammers will give up and leave you alone, but that's not been my experience. Once a domain finds its way onto those lists, it seems impossible to get it off.

The correct solution depends on your configuration and your expectations.

If you have a config like this:

Code:

domain.dom A 1.2.3.4

then I suspect stopping the MTA or running it on a non-standard port are your only options. The expectation here is that you do not want to receive any email whatsoever.

However, if you have a config like this:

Code:

domain.dom A 1.2.3.4
www.domain.dom A 1.2.3.4

then you can remove the first domain entry, leaving the second one with the 'www' host portion intact.
With such a configuration www.domain.dom will resolve, but domain.dom by itself will not. If you continue to run an MTA on that box, the expectation is that it will receive mail for the host www.domain.dom.

Last edited by chriss; 08-24-2009 at 07:16 PM.
Reason: Don't parse the links.

Just start adding to it... I'm sure there are all kinds of ways to accomplish your request, but iptables seems like the easiest. The inbound mail gateways at the day-job have an "access.reject" file that I'd be willing to share. Last I heard some 67 million IPs were being dropped, but delivery failure (reject) notifications are sent using that method.